


don't let it bleed us dry

by ninemoons42



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon Compliant, Established Relationship, Headaches & Migraines, Inspired by Twitter, Introspection, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-29
Updated: 2019-05-29
Packaged: 2020-03-29 09:09:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19016824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: Most other people have their own fault-lines, Gladio thinks. Most other people crack under whatever kind of pressure gets placed on them, or whatever kind of pressure they place on themselves. It doesn’t have to be something big to exert pressure. It doesn’t have to be something that could shatter at any moment. It doesn’t even have to be -- important.





	don't let it bleed us dry

**Author's Note:**

> Blame this one on Twitter enablers and fellow Gladnis fans :)

It isn’t even a -- habit any more, he thinks, as he pulls into a slightly different parking spot, compared to -- when had he been here last, again? -- why can’t he remember? He never parks right in front of the walk-up apartments if he can help it, for the sake of camouflage, for the sake of the appearance of not getting in others’ way, for the sake of not casting a larger shadow than he already happens to have -- he parks his car, more banged-up than most already on this street, and his eyes drift up three storeys to the windows on the easternmost side of this face of the building that he’s heading towards.

Not a good sign, Gladio thinks, that the windows are dark. Nothing to see there, not even a hint of lamplight to outline the layers of curtains -- just the night’s shadows inside and outside.

And maybe that’s not the only reason why he hurries, why his shoes thud double-time up the stairs -- maybe it’s a lucky thing there’s no one stirring, here, either, or he would have stood a more than decent chance of accidentally running someone down, and that would have really put a damper on his day -- or the end of it, the last traces of it -- knowing the time, knowing the futility of grasping after the minutes and the seconds running away from him -- already he’s closer to midnight than he wants to be and it’s only a matter of short hours before tomorrow pounces on him again, pounces on them again, chewing them into pulp, and he wishes he could curse the relentless gnash of its teeth.

Instead he growls to himself and tries to make the mental image go away -- and he can’t, he’s still on edge, when he fumbles for the second set of keys he carries around with him. He’s taken a leaf out of Iris’s book -- and a couple of swipes out of her many many bottles of nail lacquer -- and the number of strokes in reverse order. The key with three lines is the key he needs to use first.

Maybe there are scratches around the locks on this door, and maybe some of them come from him, from fumbling so hard because he’s got far too many emotions in the way, far too words he can’t say and they’re clogging up his throat -- lump that sits jagged-edged in his chest, too. 

And if he keeps on carrying on like this, like an idiot, he’ll barge into this space with them and that’s literally the last thing he wants to do -- 

Only the long days and hours of looking around this room, of moving around it, let him navigate it properly. Long days and hours of pacing the edges. Feeling entirely out of place and then feeling entirely like he’s taking up too much space, with the things he wants to say, the things he can’t find the words for. 

Not for the first time, he thinks -- what is the use of knowing all the words he’s picked up from all the books if he can’t actually -- use them as well? If he can’t pick the right ones and then put them in the right order, so that he can express himself. So that he doesn’t have to bottle up his emotions and carry them around under his heart, like another kind of weight, like another set of edges. So he doesn’t have to -- resort to his own body and his own gestures -- because words ought to have been the easier language, the easier expression, and yet they’re not.

Fucking words. Fucking language. Fucking emotions.

All the way through the rooms of the apartment to the one that has the windows, to the interior, to the curtains hanging limp and -- the expanse of the bed. The lump beneath the blanket, the tense angles and lines, the crackling restless silence.

This is -- not new, is the thing. How can it be so? Most other people have their own fault-lines, Gladio thinks, as he tries to take off his shoes in the quiet, in the dark. Most other people crack under whatever kind of pressure gets placed on them, or whatever kind of pressure they place on themselves. It doesn’t have to be something big to exert pressure. It doesn’t have to be something that could shatter at any moment. It doesn’t even have to be -- important.

It just has to be something.

And there’s always something, in his life, in Ignis’s.

So he mutters, mostly apologetically, as he sits down on the floor next to the bed -- there’s a protesting twinge of pain in his lower back, and he can only ignore it for now -- he reaches out to the person who’s still and silent.

Doesn’t make contact.

Wrecked whisper that comes to him, eventually: “It may be a while.”

“Got nowhere else to be,” he lies. He wants his bed. He wants to sleep. He wants to -- drink something and then sleep, maybe, the way his father sometimes hangs his head in guilt and shame and the sheer pure stress that shows in the lines of his face, before making his way to the plain and sturdy cabinet behind his desk in his office. The clink of a heavy tumbler, and the glitter of lamplight on decanters. The hand that sometimes trembles, in drinking, and sometimes doesn’t.

And Gladio’s made his way through one or two of those decanters all on his own, regretting that he can’t even remember the weight of the flavors laying heavily on his tongue, and he wishes now that he’d had the foresight to take one and bring it to this bed.

“Gladio.”

“Ignis.”

“I -- ”

Even that one small word breaks something in him, because -- it doesn’t sound like Ignis at all.

Confident. Commanding. Assured. Always capable, and always ready to slide an edge of mocking humor into the moment, usually mocking -- Ignis’s sense of humor could rival the Leiden desert, when he’s really in his element.

And this is not his element at all -- and all Gladio has to do to know that is turn in his direction. The lines in Ignis’s face where he’s finally managed to reveal himself. The tic in his jaw and the deep furrows between his eyebrows. The tears standing out stark in his eyes, and stubbornly unshed. The cracks in his lips -- which make Gladio start, and look to the night-stand -- pitcher, glass, no water -- and he says, quietly, “Stay where you are.”

“Nowhere I can be,” hoarse and graveled words, each syllable driving itself into Gladio’s spirit like spikes and daggers.

He refills the pitcher -- and for good measure goes to find one of the others, neatly tucked away in the kitchen cabinets -- he’s practically running back to the bedroom and he somehow pours, neat and nothing spilled, into the tumbler. “Your meds.”

“I took them. They’re not working.”

“Elixir?”

“It did not work for long.”

Shit, then it’s worse than Gladio’d thought. No wonder Ignis hasn’t even gestured to the -- things he should have still been working on. Notebooks, pens, phone -- none of those anywhere near the bed. He hasn’t seen the shapes of them anywhere in this room. 

“What can I do,” he asks, and he wishes he could fly into a rage. He wishes he could -- take the pain away from Ignis. He wishes he could make him feel better somehow, but what else is there in this world, that can help something like this? 

The lump in his chest grows heavier, knowing, understanding. Some kinds of pain are easy to wish away, or wash away, like the kinks he gets in his muscles after a particularly vigorous sparring session. Some kinds of pain are easy to push aside, because there are more important things to be doing, because there are more pressing things to consider. Some kinds of pain really are small.

But the other kind, or kinds -- well, if his father has to drink and Noct has to resort to things that should be contraband -- if Ignis hasn’t even been able to get up -- 

What else is there? What can he do?

He can only repeat himself -- and curse himself, because here he is brooding over what he can’t do and there is Ignis, groaning softly as he tries to shift into another position -- it’s not him, Gladio thinks, it’s not like him at all, to be so tentative and slow about it. 

It’s the pain, he thinks.

And he can’t fight that -- again his body protests as he pushes himself into movement. He’s on fairly intimate terms with his kind of pain by now, and he knows that there’s something about it that lingers, a fear-memory, a prey-instinct. His is branded into his muscles and his bones. Other people carry theirs however they do.

Close as he is to Ignis now, maybe he still isn’t close enough yet to determine -- what of his pain is purely in his body, and what of it is elsewhere. Mind or heart or spirit -- indomitable as he may seem -- indomitable as Gladio wants to be, himself. Ignis is his role model, after all, one of them -- and whatever it is he’s carrying around with him, in terms of the pain that he feels -- maybe Gladio can’t do anything about the pain itself, but he can help, still, or try to.

He just has to try and remember what worked the last time, and that had been a while back, he thinks.

So he heads into the adjoining bathroom and -- runs the taps. Warm water, enough to half-fill the sink, enough for him to soak a washcloth until it’s soft and weightless in his hands. Drop of oil from the small dark-green bottle in the mirror-fronted cabinet, that smells of tree-sap in full summer’s flow, and he lets that scent soothe him, too, just a little -- the oil spreads onto the washcloth in faintly creeping golden lines, a widening ragged circle, and before it can get any further he folds the whole thing into quarters and steps back.

The storm of his thoughts still building and building as he takes in the effort of Ignis, struggling to get up from the bed and -- he drops the folded washcloth onto that lined forehead, and takes his place at Ignis’s back, as gently as he can. Bracing him upright.

Whispers that maybe sound a little like the beginnings of relief, or at least don’t sound like pain.

He’ll take it.

He’ll take the fresh shift of Ignis, too: head lolling onto his chest. Of course there’s no getting away from the smell of sweat gone dried and stiff and probably leaving rings in the ragged collar of the soaked shirt -- but he’s not planning to complain, not when Ignis lets out an exhausted sigh that also sort of sounds a little less unhappy.

The sound of the late-night wind that soughs in through the windows half-startles him, but not as much as the weight of Ignis’s hands winding around his wrists. Not as much as the rumble of, “May I?”

This he has the words for, and he’s grateful. “Blanket permission,” he says, and he dares to assume he’s got it, too -- dares to press a kiss into the top of Ignis’s head. Hair gone limp and lank and a little greasy, which, again, there’s no way he’s blaming Ignis for that.

“You’ll regret saying that,” Ignis mutters, sounding a little like the threat he is, when he’s not wracked by pain.

“No.” Now he can smile, a little, as his arms are guided into position, slung loosely around Ignis. The weight of him all along his front -- boneless and tense at the same time. 

Even when he carefully pets across Ignis’s forehead the lines don’t go away, and he can only sigh, and keep holding him. 

“It will pass. It always does.”

“You’re not here to comfort me,” he says, wincing because he can hear the roughness in his voice. He soldiers on anyway. “I’m here to do that.”

“I hate being in pain like this.”

“Yeah,” he says, and he kisses Ignis again, near his temple this time. Trying to make as small an impact as he can. Trying to make only his emotions felt, and not the actual weight of his body. 

He loses track of time, and that -- that shouldn’t be happening, they’ve both got too much still left to do -- 

He still startles when Ignis mutters something that sounds like: “Teeth.”

“Pardon,” he says, softly. “What about them?”

“Pain, like teeth.”

He blinks, and remembers his earlier thought, and -- well, Ignis is right, too. “Whole world sometimes feels like it. Like chewing on us.”

“Hate it,” he hears Ignis mutter. “Despise it.”

“And fight back,” he adds. “However we can.”

“This is not it.”

He wants to shake him to tell him he’s wrong; he doesn’t do that.

Instead, he says, “I didn’t say we fought it all the time.”

Tension in Ignis’s shoulders, but only for a moment. “No. You’re right. But this is -- not what I wanted.”

“I wish I could get you what you wanted,” he says, quietly, honestly. “Whatever it is.”

Gladio tries to shift on the bed, too, to get a little more comfortable himself, and he doesn’t mind that he didn’t get an answer, because he doesn’t mind those deep slowing breaths and now maybe he can hope that the worst of this -- attack -- is over.

“I do,” and he nearly startles when the words come.

“Sorry?”

But Ignis only repeats himself: “I do. Thank you.”

Oh.

“I’m trying,” he says. 

“Yes. I cannot ask for more than that.”

“Okay,” he says.

Someday, maybe, he’ll believe it.

Or -- someday, maybe, he’ll be able to counter it.

For that he needs words, for that he needs Ignis to be free of his pain.

So that’s not today. 

Gladio only has to act, and only has to do -- this. Keep doing this, keep holding them together, in these hours, in these nights.

And he hitches Ignis closer, and tries to do just that.

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me on Tumblr at my FFXV sideblog [@ninemoons42-lestallumhaven](http://ninemoons42-lestallumhaven.tumblr.com/) or at my main [@ninemoons42](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/) \-- or, hey, if Tumblr becomes too rotten and we can't talk there any more, there's always Twitter, where I am @ninemoons42.


End file.
